Horse Mavericks

Part Three of The Art of Believing

Photo by g-hat

While my four-year-old was living her dream and practicing ballet in the next room, I sat on a wooden bench in the lobby of the dance studio.  I was talking to the father of another ambitious dancer, when the conversation somehow drifted to Lanny West and how he thinks it is important for me to not get frustrated with myself and believe my body can learn to rope if I give it a chance. 

John leaned forward on the bench.  His eyes grew large and a smile spread across his face.  John, who didn’t look a day older than 35, but was really 43 years old, exuded energy.  He was a business owner, a husband and a father to two adorable little girls.  He had been a fireman, an insurance agent, and wore shorts in 30-degree temperatures. 

He shared his experiences about the importance of believing.  I listened because I knew he had bought two branches of a franchise in the current recession.  He told me about the vacation home he rented to tourist, which remained full because he believed it would remain full.  He told me about how he won a raffle for season passes to the local ski hill simply because he believed he would.

The examples seemed a little far-fetched to me, but he shared his experiences with such conviction that I couldn’t help but be intrigued.  “I’ve never had any thing like that happen to me,” I said.  “What makes it work?”

“You’ve got to believe,” he said.  “You can’t have a sponsoring thought.” 

“What do you mean by a sponsoring thought?”  I said.

He spread his fingers and hovered them over his forehead.  “You can’t think up here you believe, but –” he pointed to the back of his head “–in the back of your mind you wonder if it is really going to happen.  You have to believe.  It’s unwavering faith.”

I thought about all the times Lanny West had told me to believe I can rope even when I mess up.  “So how do you get rid of the sponsoring thought?”  I asked John.

“I tell my employees to just believe it.  Post notes all over the house.  Put your goals in front of you all the time.  Don’t have any doubt.” 

Later, as I mulled over the conversation, something didn’t feel right.  There had to be more to it than just believing.  The notion bordered on fairy-tale thinking:  If you wish on a star or if you wish hard enough, your dreams will come true.  It was too magical for me to feel comfortable.  On the other hand, he had told his stories with such self-assurance, there had to be some truth in what he was saying. 

Then, out of the blue, I thought about the tumblebug, and my mind sunk from the stars and landed in a pile of feces.  I’ve written about dung beetles before in The Tale of the Tumblebug.  During my research for the post, I came across a description in the Texas Bug Book by C. Malcolm Beck and John Howard Garret.   The article titled “A Dung Beetle Story” by Dr. Patricia Q. Richardson was especially interesting:

“As a child in South Texas, I loved the determination of tumblebugs . . . In Freer, Texas, . . . cows wondered freely through town.  I’d come across a fresh cow pie and watch the tumblebugs arrive.  Each would wrestle off a big blob of poop, busily sculpt a ball, and begin to push and roll it away to find a spot to bury it.  With curious glee, I would create obstacles in their path–a mud mountain over which they would laboriously trudge, a sand valley which they would have to scramble through.  Put a stick in the way that was absolutely too big for them to shove the ball over and they would turn and push the ball along the edge until the end where they would return again to their course. . . [T]hey always won, for the tenacity was of longer duration than my four-year-old’s attention span.”  [Page 49]

Believing in my dreams coupled with the tenacity of a tumblebug to roll a ball of poop around, over or through any obstacle had to be the secret to achieving my goals.   

Some day, I will reach the stars and rope off my horse, but I will smell like shit once I get there. 

Do you have an experiences you can share about how you believed in yourself and succeeded?  Is believing in yourself important?

Photo by g-hat

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